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Thursday 22 July 2021

A successful conclusion to the overfishing documentary in Angola. By Sofonie Dala

Is it the end of the line for fisheries subsidies?

Good evening ladies and gentlemen,

“It is with gratitude that we celebrate the conclusion of our new campaign "Overfishing in coastal Africa" recorded in the Atlantic ocean.



Ladies and gentlemen, let's start our event with a song of hope. 

A moving tribute to our amazing gospel singer Filismina. She will fill our hearts and soul with a wonderful praise. 



Today, we are presenting a conclusion. If you would like to learn more, please click on these links to watch the non-fiction stories of these amateur fishermen and explore anything that catches your attention:

Day 1 - The story of Claudia - female fisherman


Day 2 - spotlight on young fishermen 


Day 3 - spotlight on amateur fishermen 


Campaign report

It was a fantastic short edition of three stories only, but with a great social impact. Our campaign aims to report the issues that fisheries sectors in Angola are experiencing, driven by intense competition for marine resources.

As shown in the stories, we conducted a brief reportage with fishermen in the city of Luanda, Angola. We collected stories from people of different ages, adolescents, youth and adults. They reported that there is a lot of fish in the sea but they face financial problems and lack of fishing material that is very expensive.


Additionally, today fish in the informal market is very expensive because the fishermen who sell fish to the informal traders cannot fish in large quantities due to the lack of financial resources, lack of support from the government, fishing gear, and constant harassment from the police. Thus making life difficult for the most vulnerable people who depend on fishing to survive.

We also noticed a low level of women leading the fishing world, they usually play the role of fishmongers in the streets. Furthermore, amateur fishermen complain about the large amount of debris and cutting metals in the sea, which in turn makes their fishing  very difficult.

I personally have witnessed this, because I am from Angola originally, and it is devastating to see how much damage humans can do to such a unique ecosystem. Sadly, there is no indication that this distressing situation will be addressed soon.

Angola is a country with insufficient marine data, no environmental conservation awareness and lack of policies regarding conservation and fisheries. 

Studies from around the world indicate that sharks and rays utilize shallow-water habitats. Unfortunately, in Angola, these are zones which are heavily impacted by artisanal and semi-industrial fisheries. The low productivity of these species leads to them being highly susceptibility to fishing pressures, this means that the Angolan fishery is likely unsustainable.


The impact of fisheries subsidies on the continent




A webinar report about fisheries subsidies in coastal Africa informs that fisheries sectors in coastal Africa and across the world are experiencing an unprecedented crisis, driven by intense competition for marine resources. For decades, many governments have provided harmful subsidies to their fishing fleets to bolster their capabilities to increase catch, both domestically and in other countries’ waters, allowing them to drastically increase their capacity and profits.

Although these subsidies are often promoted as efforts to help small-scale fishers, they often end up subsidizing overfishing, increasing fishing fleet capacity, and contributing to the unregulated plundering of other countries’ fish stocks.








Myanmar women give birth in jungle as military lies in wait

 Heavily pregnant women displaced by fighting risk their lives to give birth after being forced from their homes in escalating conflict.

Myanmar women give birth in jungle as military lies in wait

On a stormy night in June, Rosemary lay in the darkness of her home in a deserted village in Myanmar’s Mindat township, gripped by labour contractions as Mai Nightingale, a 25-year-old midwife, tried to stifle her cries.


“Only the two of us were left alone in the village. We closed all the doors and windows of the house and stayed quietly inside,” said Mai Nightingale. “When she felt pain, I put a blanket in her mouth because we feared that soldiers might hear her.” Like others interviewed for this article, Al Jazeera has used pseudonyms for Mai Nightingale and Rosemary for their safety.

Rosemary’s contractions had begun the previous night, but with soldiers approaching her village in southern Chin State, she and the other villagers fled into the forest. But there was no proper shelter from the unrelenting rain, so Rosemary and Mai Nightingale decided to take the risk of encountering soldiers and return the next morning.

“The situation didn’t favour delivering a baby,” said Mai Nightingale. “We saw Burmese soldiers walking towards our village but we couldn’t turn back because [Rosemary] was already exhausted.”

Rosemary’s husband did not dare accompany her for fear that, if seen, soldiers would mistake him for a member of a local armed group. Since a February 1 military coup, civilian defence forces, armed largely with hunting rifles and homemade weapons, have sprung up across the country to fight against the regime, and Mindat has been a hotspot of resistance since May.

In line with tactics the military has used for decades to quash an armed rebellion and terrorise the people, soldiers launched disproportionate attacks on Mindat including firing artillery, rocket-propelled grenades and machineguns into residential areas while imposing martial law, causing the town to empty, according to local media reports. Young men are particularly likely to be targeted.

[JC/Al Jazeera]

Rosemary delivered her baby shortly after the sound of soldiers had faded, and Mai Nightingale cut and tied the umbilical cord with a razor blade and some thread which, lacking other means of sterilisation, she boiled in water. Although Rosemary and her baby are healthy and unharmed, the circumstances of the birth highlight the increasing risks which mothers and newborns face amid an escalating humanitarian crisis.

Mai Nightingale and two other nurses interviewed by Al Jazeera, who are providing maternal and newborn healthcare to those displaced by armed conflict, say they are severely limited in their ability to safely deliver babies, and that physical insecurity further imperils pregnant women and newborns amid the continuing violence.

“The main health risks for pregnant women and newborn babies are their lives. They can die during labour or after because they have to run whenever soldiers get closer to where they are hiding,” said a nurse in Loikaw township, Kayah State who goes by the nickname Smile. “There is not enough medical equipment or medicine … Babies cannot get vaccinations or adequate shelter.”

Collapsing health system

Some 230,000 people have been newly displaced since the coup, according to United Nations estimates.

The military has not only attacked civilians but has also cut off food and water supplies to people affected by conflict, shelled displacement camps and churches of refuge, shot displaced people attempting to fetch rice from their villages, and burned food and medical relief supplies along with an ambulance.

Meanwhile, Myanmar’s health system has all but collapsed, leaving few options even for those women prepared to risk returning to their town or village to give birth or seek vaccinations or treatment for their babies.

Ongoing medical worker strikes amid a broader Civil Disobedience Movement have left government hospitals threadbare, while some health facilities have shut down altogether. The military has also repeatedly attacked healthcare professionals and facilities and occupied hospitals.

My mother placed her hand on my cousin and prayed. By the grace of God, she successfully gave birth

SMILE, MYANMAR NURSE

Alessandra Dentice, Myanmar representative ad interim with the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), told Al Jazeera that the vast majority of pregnant women displaced since the coup lack access to emergency obstetric care, while routine immunisations for children have “come to an almost complete halt”.

“Without urgent action, we estimate that annually 600,000 newborns will miss out on essential newborn care, creating serious risks for their survival and long-term wellbeing across the country,” she said, adding that about 950,000 children are also missing out on critical vaccination services.

In Mindat, Mai Nightingale has so far assisted three displaced women to deliver. Two of them, she said, had to keep moving in search of safe shelter in the days leading up to giving birth, causing them physical pain and possibly inducing their labour.

[JC/AL Jazeera]

Mai Nightingale knows that providing medical services to pregnant women and newborns while lacking facilities or hygienic equipment is exceedingly dangerous for the women and their babies, and that security forces could also target her, but says she feels it is the only option. “Even though soldiers could arrest both the patients and me, I will continue helping people who need medical assistance,” she told Al Jazeera. “There is no one else who can help them.”

Pregnant women in Kayah State, where an estimated 100,000 people have been displaced since early June, also face a perilous situation. On June 8, the UN special rapporteur for Myanmar warned of “mass deaths from starvation, disease and exposure” in Kayah due to military attacks and the blockage of food, water and medicine to those who fled to the forest.

Smile, a 24-year-old nurse, escaped her village in Loikaw township on June 11 with her cousin, who was in the throes of labour contractions while she fled. “Artillery fell near the rock where we were hiding. That day was [my cousin’s] due date but she couldn’t deliver … we had to escape to safety,” said Smile. “She had to carry heavy things while we were running.”

Recalling advice from her mother, also a nurse, Smile had grabbed a delivery kit with rubber gloves, forceps and scissors as she fled the village. “My mother told me that medical workers cannot stop even if the world is in chaos,” she said.

She and her mother rubbed down the equipment with spirits while her cousin’s husband built a bamboo and tarpaulin tent, under which they delivered her cousin’s baby. “My mother placed her hand on my cousin and prayed. By the grace of God, she successfully gave birth without [heavy] bleeding,” said Smile.

But tragedy has befallen some displaced mothers.

Little time to grieve

In Loikaw township, Khu Meh delivered twins at a local clinic on April 8. One was born dead; Khu Meh fled home with the other, a girl, in mid-May. “We travelled very far and moved from place to place, sometimes sleeping in the bushes,” she said. About three weeks later, the second twin died in the jungle while drinking milk at Khu Meh’s breast.

Some 40km (25 miles) north, in Shan State’s Pekon township, Mary fled her home in the last week of May, when she was more than seven months pregnant.

“The military was firing every night … we were very scared to sleep at home,” she said.

She sheltered in a church, but after it was shelled on June 6, she fled again, to a cornfield where she delivered her fifth child, a baby boy, under a bamboo and tarpaulin shelter with the help of a local midwife.

The next week brought endless rain, and Mary’s baby died suddenly. There was little time to grieve. Mary and her remaining children had to flee again a week later due to approaching soldiers.

[JC/AL Jazeera]

Although Myanmar saw a fall in maternal mortality rates and under-five mortality between 2000 and 2017, according to UNICEF, it remained one of the riskiest places for new mothers and infants in Southeast Asia even before the coup.

Maternal mortality was 250 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2017, while under-five mortality was 48 children per 100,000 live births.

Al Jazeera was unable to locate data on maternal and infant mortality among displaced populations in Myanmar since the coup.

Naw Winnie, a nurse from Demoso township, Kayah State who was herself displaced by fighting, is now volunteering with a local aid group in the mountainous area where she fled.

She told Al Jazeera that illness among young children is common. She has treated dozens of skin infections and cases of diarrhoea, and fears that health problems will only increase because of poor hygiene caused by factors including the scarcity of clean water and the lack of toilets.

The rainy season started in June, making sanitation more difficult and increasing the risk of catching a cold, flu, or mosquito-borne illnesses.

Naw Winnie is also looking after more than 10 pregnant women.

She had initially planned to send them to a temporary clinic near the foothills of the mountain, but the clinic’s volunteers and patients were forced to evacuate amid heavy fighting on June 16.

Now she is not sure what she will do.

One of the women, now more than five months pregnant, previously gave birth by Caesarean section, and Naw Winnie is concerned the woman could haemorrhage if she delivers vaginally, but it is simply too risky to perform a Caesarean section in the jungle.

“We don’t have access to safe and hygienic facilities or equipment to deliver babies,” she said. “If I assist in delivering a baby without hygienic facilities, it will put both mothers and babies in danger.”

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA

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Flood toll rises in central China, as tens of thousands evacuated

The weather bureau raises a storm alert for four cities in the north of Henan to the highest level as record-breaking rain triggers heavy floods.

Flood toll rises in central China, as tens of thousands evacuated


At least 33 people have been confirmed dead, with eight missing, in record-breaking floods in central China that have forced tens of thousands of people to evacuate their homes, state media reported.

The provincial weather bureau on Thursday raised the storm alert to red for four cities in the north of Henan – Xinxiang, Anyang, Hebi and Jiaozuo – the highest tier of a four-step colour-coded weather warning system, as rain spread northwards from Zhengzhou, the hard-hit provincial capital, about 650km (400 miles) southwest of Beijing.

Twelve of the deceased were the victims of the submerged Zhengzhou’s underground metro system, while others drowned when an underpass was inundated. Eight people are listed as missing across the province.

More than 73,000 people were being evacuated from Anyang, on Henan’s border with Hebei province, after the city was swamped by more than 600mm (24 inches) of rainfall since Monday, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

Xinxiang, a small city north of Zhengzhou, recorded 812mm (32 inches) of rain between Tuesday and Thursday, shattering local meteorological records, Xinhua reported. Seven medium-sized reservoirs in the city had overflowed, affecting scores of nearby villages and towns.

As of late Wednesday, more than 470,000 people and more than 55,000 hectares (135,910 acres) of crops have been affected by the Xinxiang downpours, Xinhua said, adding the local government had deployed a search and rescue team with more than 76,000 personnel.

In neighbouring Hebei, two people were killed when a tornado struck the city of Baoding.

Flooded, lightless cabins

The fatal flooding of the Zhengzhou subway prompted an order for local authorities to immediately improve urban transit flood controls and emergency responses.

Media images showed commuters immersed in chest-deep waters in carriages that had been plunged into darkness. One underground station was reduced to a large churning pool of water.

The Ministry of Transport said local authorities must immediately re-examine and rectify all hidden risks on rail transport systems.

“They must take emergency measures such as suspending trains, evacuating passengers, and closing stations in atypical situations such as excessively intense storms,” the ministry said in a statement on Thursday.

The fatal flooding of the Zhengzhou subway prompted the government to order local authorities to immediately improve urban transit flood controls and emergency responses [China Daily via Reuters]

Some 617.1mm (24.3 inches) of rain fell in Zhengzhou from Saturday to Tuesday, almost the equivalent of the city’s annual average of 640.8mm (25.2 inches).

Zhang Mingying, from the Beijing Meteorological Bureau, said the heavy rainfall in Zhengzhou had overwhelmed the capability of its drainage infrastructure making the flood “unavoidable”, the Global Times reported.

Public scrutiny has also fallen on the timeliness of weather bulletins provided by local meteorological services.

The provincial weather bureau told state media it had issued a report warning of the coming torrential rains two days in advance.

Since Monday evening, meteorological departments from the provincial down to the county level have sent out 120 million text messages to mobile phone users warning them of the storms, the Henan weather bureau said.

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES

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Siglo XXI: My 24 hours in Mexico’s 21st-century migrant prison

 On July 11, I found myself imprisoned at Mexico’s infamous Siglo XXI “migration station” in Tapachula – a city in the state of Chiapas near the border with Guatemala – which specialises in detaining US-bound migrants from Central America and beyond.


Siglo XXI: My 24 hours in Mexico’s 21st-century migrant prison

Mine was a curious predicament, to say the least, for a citizen of the United States, exempt as we usually are from the fallout of border militarisation policies that make the world safe for US imperialism.

I had come to Tapachula for four days to write about migrants. When I attempted to board my return flight to Mexico City, I was apprehended for visa irregularities of my own and loaded into a van bound for Siglo XXI, which means “21st century” in Spanish.

According to the Associated Press, the detention centre is said to be the largest in Latin America, and is a “secretive place off-limits to public scrutiny where … journalists aren’t allowed”.

Whoops.

The initial semi-enthusiasm I felt at the prospect of my impending exclusive view of the mechanics of the US-dictated migrant detention regime quickly began to dissipate, however, when I was informed that I would likely be deported to the homeland – which I had abandoned 18 years earlier on account of its general creepiness and adverse effects on my mental health.

Upon arrival at the facility, I was systematically relieved of all possessions minus a change of underwear, a clean shirt, a bag of cranberries, and a smattering of toiletries and other items.

A female immigration officer barked menacing orders to turn off my mobile phone and remove my bracelets, earrings, and the laces from my tennis shoes. When I broke down in tears and begged her to pretend to be human for a second, she assured me that this was all for my own “security” – although her tone did soften when she inquired after the gigabyte capacity of my decrepit iPod.

Then my pen was forcibly taken away, as well, and I was admitted to the innards of the damp and teeming detention centre, where the sense of suffocating claustrophobia was hardly helped by a near-total lack of face masks among the detainees despite ubiquitous coughing and other indications of malaise.

For those who were not already sick, illness-inducing meals were provided three times a day, requiring all detainees to first line up to wait to sign their names on a list before lining up to wait to receive the meal – such being the nature of arbitrary and bureaucratic power, with its need to exert order over dehumanised bodies.

To be sure, waiting is the primary activity of the approximation of life that occurs within the walls of Siglo XXI. In addition to the often seemingly interminable wait for liberation – I met women who had already been interned one month in the facility – there is also the waiting-within-waiting: for food, phone calls, toilet paper, showers.

In the morning, there is the wait for the decision for the door to be unlocked to the flea-infested prison yard, the highlights of which include a mango tree, a sports court with a single deflated ball, and perennial police surveillance from beyond the towering fence.

Answers to mundane and existential questions alike – “When can I have a book to read?”, “When will I know if I am being deported or will be granted asylum in Mexico?” – are never forthcoming, as immigration officials tend to prefer either the noncommittal “más tarde” (later) or the even simpler shrug.

And for women who have just endured perilous journeys after escaping hazardous conditions in their own countries – all with the hope of eventually making it to perceived safety in the US – the psychological torture of being condemned to indefinite and criminalised limbo is not necessarily conducive to a desire for self-preservation.

In other words, I now understand why they confiscate shoelaces.

Inside Siglo XXI, I met a young woman who had fled Honduras after her two sisters were murdered; I met another Honduran whose father had been killed. I met Cubans who had crossed 14 countries to get to Mexico, and who reported having encountered rampant cadavers belonging to previous migrants while traversing the notorious Darien Gap between Panama and Colombia.

To be sure, each of these corpses served as a reminder of the very short distance between life and death for people marked as of inherently inferior value by an international capitalist hierarchy.

A Bangladeshi woman, who spoke no Spanish and had spent nine months journeying to Mexico with her husband – himself now imprisoned in the men’s section of Siglo XXI, which by all accounts was even more horrifically overcrowded and subject to more hands-on forms of torture – cried as she told me how her mental anguish was only compounded by the suffering she was causing her mother back home.

She was introduced to me by a group of Haitian women who had been unsuccessfully attempting to communicate with her, and who had summoned me over with the announcement that they had found me an English-speaking friend. When not slumped over on a cement bench staring into oblivion, my new friend could be seen lying in a corner of the dining area, her blanket over her head.

As for my sleeping arrangements, I was sharing the floormat of a defiantly upbeat Cuban girl who would not hear of me placing my own floormat directly in front of the toilet – the only remaining available space.

My bedmate remarked wryly: “If this is the 21st century, I’d hate to see the 22nd.”

While the sense of despair in Siglo XXI was at times overpowering, there was also a collective refusal to allow humanity to be purged so easily by the powers that be. Women would spontaneously break into song, collect mangoes, hold each other’s hands, comb each other’s hair. Two Cubans had undertaken to teach critical Spanish vocabulary like “shorts” to the lone Chinese detainee. A Honduran university graduate who had studied none other than human rights held her towel up for me in lieu of a shower curtain.

As someone prone to panic attacks and spectacularly inept at dealing with adversity in life, I found it immensely comforting to have two Cuban feet in my face all night. I was also well aware that my visible fragility was less than endearing in a detention situation created in large part by my own nation – a situation from which, thanks to my passport privilege, I would inevitably be extricated with relatively minimal suffering.

While my fellow inmates could not fathom why the neurotic gringa was resisting return to the country they were risking their lives to reach, they charitably restricted their reactions to hysterical laughter at the ironic prospect of being deported to the US.

I would later learn that when my mother phoned the US embassy in Mexico, she was told that I would likely be held at Siglo XXI for at least two weeks, and that the US government could not intervene: “We cannot tell Mexico what to do.”

And yet operations at the detention facility are pretty much an exact example of the US telling Mexico what to do. Current Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who initially promised a humane migration policy, swiftly realised that doing imperial dirty work offered greater rewards.

It bears reiterating, too, that US intervention in other people’s affairs is largely to blame for migration patterns in the first place. In Central America, decades of US militarisation and backing of right-wing coups and slaughter have forced countless thousands of civilians to flee landscapes of extreme violence and impunity.

In Haiti, meanwhile, perennial news reports about the “Western Hemisphere’s poorest nation” consistently neglect to mention the US history of sponsoring coups and chaos in said nation in the interest of maintaining neoliberal misery. One need look no further than that time the US State Department conspired to block an increase in the minimum wage – to 62 cents per hour! – for Haitian assembly zone workers toiling on behalf of US clothing manufacturers.

And in Cuba, a six-decade-long crippling blockade – imposed by the US to deter other countries from infection with dangerous anti-capitalist notions like free healthcare and education – has produced predictable shortages and attendant migration away from the island.

As for me, my own Siglo XXI experience came to a close when I was miraculously liberated, sans deportation, after 24 hours – thanks not to the efforts of my homeland but rather to a Mexican journalist friend and others who intervened on my behalf.

My belongings were returned to me – minus my pen, earplugs, tweezers, and compact mirror – and I was escorted to the Guatemalan border in an immigration vehicle to receive a brand-new Mexican visa. On the way there, I told the female immigration official accompanying me that I would have plenty to write about; she nodded with an encouraging smile: “Don’t forget to put that you cried!”

In the end, Mexico’s Siglo XXI migrant prison is appropriately symbolic of a 21st century in which much of the earth’s population is effectively imprisoned in US-inflicted political and economic nightmares.

If business continues as usual, I would indeed hate to see the 22nd.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

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UK ‘pingdemic’ raises fears of food shortages

 Supply chains are heavily disrupted with hundreds of thousands of workers in self-isolation as COVID cases surge.

UK ‘pingdemic’ raises fears of food shortages


Britain’s supermarkets, wholesalers and hauliers are struggling to ensure stable food and fuel supplies after an official health app told hundreds of thousands of workers to isolate themselves after contact with someone with COVID-19.


On Thursday, newspapers carried front-page pictures of empty shelves in supermarkets, while shoppers also took to social media to highlight shortages of certain products in stores across the country.

The Reuters news agency reported food items were widely available in shops in the capital, London, although there were some shortages of bottled water, soft drinks and some salad and meat products. The United Kingdom’s second-largest supermarket group Sainsbury’s said customers would generally be able to find the products they want, though perhaps not every brand.

Addressing the reports of empty supermarket shelves in some areas, Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng told UK broadcaster Sky News the government was “very concerned about the situation”.

He added officials were monitoring events closely.

Availability issues’

Kwarteng’s comments came after many businesses warned the situation was becoming grave, with supply chains stuttering due to the number of workers isolating amid the UK’s so-called “pingdemic”.

As infections rates surge nationwide, hundreds of thousands of people have been been “pinged” by the National Health Service (NHS) app, telling them to stay at home for up to 10 days after being recorded in close contact with a person who has tested positive for the coronavirus.

More than half a million people were told to self-isolate in the first week of July alone – the highest weekly figure since the app launched in September 2020 – and that number continues to rise. Official data on Thursday showed nearly 620,000 people in England and Wales were told to isolate in the week up to July 14, with the vast majority being in England.

It came after a meat industry body warned on Wednesday that Britain’s food supply chains are “right on the edge of failing”, with absence related to COVID-19 aggravating a critical shortage of labour.

Supermarket group Iceland meanwhile announced it had closed a number of stores due to staff shortages.

“We have a structural issue with HGV [heavy goods vehicles] drivers for a variety of different reasons, but of course the ‘pingdemic’ has made it even worse,” Managing Director Richard Walker told UK broadcaster ITV.

“We are starting to see some availability issues.”

Reopening marred by ‘pingdemic’

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s move to further ease England’s COVID-19 lockdown restrictions on Monday and boost the country’s pandemic-battered economy has been tarnished by the number of people now self-isolating.

The app’s alerts, which are advisory but not legally binding, have also caused huge disruption to the hospitality, manufacturing and media sectors, as well as the UK’s transport network, schools and healthcare system.

Ministers have argued the system plays an important role in countering the spread of the virus as the UK’s COVID-19 caseload soars, with more than 44,000 new infections recorded on Wednesday.

However, in a bid to ease the pressure on some sectors, the government announced on Monday that it would allow workers in certain critical roles to carry on working despite being “pinged” if they were fully vaccinated.

Officials have said exemptions will be “considered on a case-by-case basis”, with employers having to file applications on staff members’ behalf, and no blanket list of eligible critical workers will be drawn up.

Infections expected to surge

Andrew Opie, director of food and sustainability at industry lobby group, the British Retail Consortium, called on the government to act swiftly.

“Retail workers and suppliers, who have played a vital role throughout this pandemic, should be allowed to work provided they are double vaccinated or can show a negative COVID test, to ensure there is no disruption to the public’s ability to get food and other goods,” he said.

While the NHS app’s self-isolation pings are only advisory, anyone in England who is contacted directly by its Test and Trace service must by law isolate for 10 days.

The UK has the world’s seventh-highest COVID-19 death toll and the rate of new cases is forecast to rise sharply following the recent lifting of restrictions in England, characterised by Johnson as “freedom day”.

But a rapid vaccination programme that has seen 87 percent of adults receive at least one vaccine dose and more than 68 percent fully inoculated to date appears to have weakened the link between infections and deaths.

Daily deaths have remained low in recent weeks compared with earlier waves of the pandemic.

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES

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Support for the AGROS-SMART PROJECT: Let's make 100!

 Dear all 


Kindly write to you for asking your support for an activity for the AGROS-SMART project 
We are making a survey for small holder farmers in order to assess their needknowledge and implementation of Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA)

Through this survey we want to create a knowledge platform to support small holders to implement and spread CSA and support communities of practices
We want to reach at least 100 responses by the end of July
The target is mostly Small Holder farmers, Agriculture Practictionnaires, Volunteers in the field of Agriculuture
KINDLY ASK TO RESPOND IF YOU ARE IN THIS STAKEHOLDER GROUPS and SPREAD AMONG YOUR CONTACT

INTRO
Small holder farmers are one of the most vulnerable subjects of the effects of climate change. Due to their attitude to plan and to follow natural rhythms, they are strongly affected by the increase in variability due to the changing climate. On this issue technology can help to increase resilience realizing climate smart agriculture. Standing to FAO, climate smart agriculture helps to guide actions needed to transform and reorient the agricultural system to effectively support development and ensure food security in a changing climate.

With AGROS-SMART we want support small holder farmers in better adapt crop management to the changing enviroment due to climate change, to offer a platform where exchange best practices and ideas and to build farmer resilience by applying the principle of Climate Smart Agriculture

WE GREATLY THANK YOU IF YOU COULD SUPPORT US WITH YOUR FEEDBACKs and SUGGESTION!!
Here the survey : https://forms.gle/ws2FJTFx54Bs8x7HA

In the case you need a paper based iN ATTACHMENT the paper.
Please, send back to hubzine.italia@gmail.com

For any question or collaboration you can mail to : hubzine.italia@gmail.com

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